Girl Detective

#56 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Bourne Ultimatum. Like its predecessors, it’s a smart thriller, well acted by a deep bench of good character actors. Yours is a three-part mission, should you choose to accept it:

1. Watch/rewatch The Bourne Identity
2. Watch/rewatch The Bourne Supremacy
3. Go see The Bourne Ultimatum in a theater

For this series, good things come in threes. The direction is fantastic, the pace frenetic, and the endings satisfying. Damon’s Bourne is like a crazy mishmash of the Midnighter and MacGyver, on meth. The three films are linked in story and images, so watching them in sequence yields more than watching them individually, or at long intervals.

Finding the original two movies on DVD may be difficult. There was a long wait list at our library, because over half the copies are missing. Two copies are missing from our video store. Three of our local Targets didn’t have the dvds in stock. We did manage to find one last copy of the three-disc set, The Bourne Files, at a Barnes and Noble. Less expensive than purchasing the previous movies on dvd individually, it was well worth it, though Entertainment Weekly says the new extras are a snooze. If you rent or borrow them, I don’t recommend the “Explosive Extended Edition” of Bourne Identity. The alternate beginning and ending weren’t used for good reason.

From Suicide Girl News: Brad Pitt wants to channel Steve McQueen in a remake of Bullitt. I agree that it’s a bad idea. Remakes are a bad idea in general, and revisiting McQueen specifically requires a lot of chutzpah. Can you think of any remakes that are better than the original? I’m sure there are some, just as there are a handful of movies whose sequel outstrips the first (Godfather Part II), and even a few third movies that are the pick of the litter (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Off the top of my head, though, I can’t think of one movie substantively improved by a remake.

At the end of the Suicide Girls piece, the author notes that many may not even have seen the McQueen movie from which his nickname is taken. It made me realize that there are a few great war movies that don’t make the top 100 lists, yet which I’ve appreciated far more than I did the carnage-strewn Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, or Saving Private Ryan.

Three Unsung War Movies:

The Great Escape: great ensemble cast, unforgettable theme song, and the origin of The Cooler King, a critical piece of filmic cultural literacy.

Stalag 17: Surprisingly, NOT the basis for Hogan’s Heroes, whose creators were sued over similarities, and won. Holden thought his character was too cynical, but he won an Oscar for the role.

The Thin Red Line: Terence Malick’s beautiful filmic meditation on the brutal rift that war creates between humanity and nature.

#51 in my 2007 movie challenge is Jean Renoir’s La Regle du Jeu, an aptly great film for hitting the big five-oh so early in the year. I saw the newly restored 35mm print, which will be shown later this summer in Vancouver, Ft. Worth and more. If you have the opportunity to go see this film’s restored print, do so. How good is the print? I could see exactly how frizzy the wife’s perm was, the shadow of a mustache above the mistress’s lip, and where the husband’s eyebrows had been redrawn.

In addition to the high quality of the print, it’s a great film. Like Citizen Kane, with which it’s often compared, it’s amazing both for the story and its technical proficiency. Like Renoir’s earlier Grand Illusion, it has a startling prescience for the coming war. Altman was a fan, and its influence is apparent in the ensemble casts of all his films, but most obviously in the upstairs/downstairs manor house of Gosford Park.

#50 in my movie challenge for the year was a re-watching of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge. I agree with the final comment from the Terri Sutton City Pages review when it came out:

Your cake is so stale it makes me sick–but oh, the frosting…

Yes, the center story is a boring and predictable love story about a hooker with a heart of gold, a penniless poet, and a lecherous rich duke. But the Bollywood-esque excess, McGregor’s charm, Kidman’s occasional and surprising comedic turns, and Luhrmann’s famous musical madness, make for a movie that so enthralls me that I watched to the end on this multiple viewing, even though I was exhausted, and kept vowing to go to bed after the VERY NEXT SCENE.

I also admit, guiltily, to singing along.

#49 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Illusionist. Like The Prestige, it is about magic shows in the 19th century, was well reviewed, and stars a famous actor (Edward Norton, Jr.), a hot young thing (Jessica Biel), and an older, skilled character actor (Paul Giamatti). My friend B wondered if she liked this movie less than The Prestige because she was in labor when she watched it. B, I don’t think it was the labor; I found The Illusionist boring, predictable, and overlong. I nearly stopped watching towards the end, and I didn’t care about any of the characters. The Prestige made me think. The Illusionist made me annoyed.

My husband G. Grod thinks that Jessica Biel’s lips are natural. Awful Plastic Surgery and I think otherwise.

#48 in my 2007 movie challenge was George Cukor’s Gaslight, a costlier remake of the 1940 UK film that was released in the US as Angel Street. MGM tried, unsuccessfully, to have all prints of the earlier film destroyed. It is included as an extra on the 2004 DVD. Ingrid Bergman is the niece of a famous singer who is murdered. Years later, a singer herself, she marries her pianist, played creepily by Charles Boyer. Cukor shows the audience Boyer is up to no good, though Bergman is kept in the dark, both by the story, and by Boyer, who is slowly trying to drive her mad. Joseph Cotten is the good guy policeman who decides to meddle, much like the policeman in Laura, then solves the mystery. A young Angela Lansbury stands out in her first role, as a saucy, sulky housemaid.

#47 in my 2007 movie challenge was Laura, which had been lounging on my Tivo drive for some time. Based on the novel by Vera Caspary, it’s another classic noir. Story doesn’t matter so much as character and atmosphere, and the latter is exemplified by the famous theme song. On the surface, it’s about a detective who becomes obsessed with a dead woman’s portrait; he feels compelled to solve her murder. Less obviously but more interestingly, it’s about women and power, both in business and in personal relationships. Vincent Price is unsettling as the handsome, well-mannered man who Laura was engaged to marry, but Clifton Webb steals the show as the pretentious man who “made” Laura.

#46 in my 2007 movie challenge was Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai. He co-starred with then-wife Rita Hayworth to raise money for the project he really wanted to be working on, a stage production of Around the World in Eighty Days.

Welles is an Irish bad boy with a shady past who falls literally in the path of Hayworth’s femme fatale, married to a rich, cruel, older, disabled man. With a bleached, short hairstyle that ages and homogenizes her striking looks, Hayworth is appropriately chilly as the removed object of Welle’s unwilling passion and sympathy. Like many noir works, the plot is not the thing, while the atmosphere is, and this film has lots of it. There is a claustrophobic boat cruise followed by twists and turns of loyalties and the truth. The end features a striking scene in a house of mirrors that may have been the first of its kind.

There is a curious lack of chemistry between Welles and Hayworth, which made sense when I learned they were soon to be divorced. Hayworth is not portrayed in a flattering light, either in appearance or character. In the end, Welles’s bitter, young loner finds that beauty and money aren’t meant to be his, and he is lucky to escape with his life and hard-earned experience. I can’t help but suspect that Welles was drawing from his own life in making this movie.

There is a remake in pre-production, slated to be directed by Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express) and rumored to star Nicole Kidman.

Edward Copeland creates a top 100 list of his own that I find much better than AFI’s. (Link thanks to A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago.) While Copeland’s list does include the Coen brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, I still found some of my favorite films missing. I feel a list of my own percolating, though I’m not sure if I have the stamina or follow through to come up with 100.

There’s a kerfuffle about the AFI’s updated list of the 100 Best American Movies. Like all lists, it is a tool to foment discussion, not to define tastes. I’ve written before about the stupidity of lists, and the propensity of we bloggers (us bloggers?) to get our undies in a twist

I don’t agree with Roger Ebert about Fargo. I’ve only seen it once, and since I live in the mocked MN, I should see it again, but I remember it as prohibitively violent for my medium-delicate sensibilities.

That the Coen Brothers are not represented is the thing to me: O Brother Where Art Thou, Miller’s Crossing, and their first, Blood Simple, all impressed me greatly. Where are other of my favorite directors, like John Sayles, and Terence Malick? Added later: Michael Mann? Steven Soderburgh?

It’s not a great list; I think it confuses popularity or cultural relevance with greatness. Also, I’m interested in how many women were on the voting panel. This seems a very guy-oriented list. Yes, like literature guys have had the power, so the best-ofs will be weighted in their favor, but there are women making good movies. I agree with Carrie Rickey about Clueless, which I found surprisingly substantive.

Time Out’s Centenary Top 100 is my favorite film list; I wish they would’ve updated this one. I buy the Time Out film guide annually, and I check the Time Out online site for reviews of current movies.

#45 in my 2007 movie challenge was Sabrina, part of the Audrey Hepburn Collection that my husband G. Grod got me for Mothers Day, to balance out the other box set. Sabrina is a classic Cinderella tale, with a Parisian transformation, and a handsome “prince” who doesn’t recognize the chauffeur’s daughter who’s been pining after him for years. Holden is delightful as the playboy brother, Bogart is funny, and charming enough to pull off the May/December pairing with Hepburn’s radiant Sabrina. Cary Grant was originally cast in the Bogart role; it would have made an interestingly different film given the variance in the actors’ looks. Only the pre-Paris Sabrina clothes are by Edith Head. Hepburn chose Givenchy to design her character’s transformed look. The role helped to make her a star; the wardrobe made her an icon. (These details are from the documentary DVD extra, more here.)

#44 in my 2007 movie challenge was Pretty in Pink, part of the “Too Cool for School” John Hughes box set that my husband got me for Mothers Day. I’d had an inexplicable craving to watch the Hughes movies again, but I worried that Pretty in Pink wouldn’t have aged gracefully. I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, the dazzling array of “volcanic ensembles” shows 80’s teen fashion in all its painful glory, but the story is a timeless one. Ringwald plays Andi, a senior in high school whose mother ran away a few years before. She lives with her shiftless but loving father on the wrong side of the literal tracks. Her best friend is Duckie, played by Jon Cryer, whose obsession with fashion is exceeded only by his unrequited love for Andi. Andrew McCarthy is “richie” Blane (Duckie: “That’s not a name! It’s a major appliance!”) who develops a crush on Andi, and tries to assure her that their Cinderella story will work. James Spader plays the deliciously nasty Steph, who tries to shame Blane out of dating Andi. The tension centers on whether Blane and Andi will go to the prom. Surprisingly, this conflict is not as superficial as it sounds. The ending does a pretty good job of having it both ways. Andi goes to the dance alone, where she meets Duckie, who redeems his movie-long annoyingness by telling her Blane came alone, and urging her to go with Blane when he tries to apologize. Blane and Andi make out in the parking lot to OMD, and, I assume, live happily ever after.

The story works because Ringwald is believable and like-able as the outcast girl who is scared to hope things might get better. Cryer is hilarious, and his lip-syncing to “Try a Little Tenderness” still has the power to wow me. Annie Potts is sympathetic as Andi’s older, weirder friend Iona, and McCarthy does a good job being the cute nice boy who’s “not like the others.”

One of the extras on the “Everything’s Duckie” edition of the DVD is an extended explanation that borders on apologia for why they changed the original ending, in which Andi and Duckie danced together. Test audiences didn’t like it, and neither did Ringwald, who felt affection for, but not chemistry with, Cryer’s Duckie. The cast got called back six months later to reshoot. McCarthy was in a play for which he’d shaved his head and lost weight. That’s why the cute boy is suddenly not as cute in the final scene. It’s not that he’s been pining for Andi, it’s that he’s gaunt and wearing a bad wig.

I can understand why many people, especially those who root for underdogs, believe that Duckie should have been the boy at the end. I agree with Ringwald, though. They didn’t have spark, and it’s a Cinderella story. The poor, nice girl needs to end up with the cute, nice, rich boy. Otherwise the message is an uncomfortable “stick to your own class, babe,” which would have made for a much darker movie, like John Sayles’s 1982 Baby It’s You.

I was sad to see, though, that Andi’s transformation of Iona’s “dreamy” prom dress was still as ugly and unbecoming as I remembered. The Duckie/Blane argument may go on forever, but I’ve never met anyone who liked the dress at the end better than the original.

#43 in my 2007 movie challenge was Network, which at 30+, is pleasingly timeless. It’s funny, sharp, and bitter, with great performances (all Oscar-nominated, or -winning) by Dunaway, Finch, and Holden. Finch died before nominations were announced, then won posthumously for Best Actor.

Network made me realize how much over the last three decades has been influenced by it: Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night and Studio 60, Good Night and Good Luck, Broadcast News. Those are the ones that came to mind immediately; there are many more. As is often the case, the famous line from the movie is not a direct quote. Finch says, “I’m AS mad as hell, and I’m not going to take THIS anymore!: (Emphasis mine.) The people who parrot him, though, misquote him with the more familiar “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” An 18-year-old Tim Robbins made his uncredited film debut in two scenes, the more notable of which is the last one.

#42 in my movie challenge for the year was The Prestige, the magic movie from last year that starred Michael Caine, Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johanson. Dark and moody like Nolan’s Batman Begins, The Prestige also doesn’t stick strictly to reality. Bale is very good, Jackman is less so, and Johanson is forgettable. The story is told in three separate time lines that meld into one by the end. As in Nolan’s Memento, the non-linear storytelling is surprisingly not difficult (I can’t quite bring myself to say “easy”) to follow. Even though my husband and I saw aspects of the reveal well in advance, the ending still gave me pause, and threw its illumination back on previous scenes, once the movie was done. The Prestige FAQ at imdb.com has a good summary of these.

#41 in my 2007 movie challenge, Ocean’s Thirteen is, like Eleven, a fun, escapist, romp. Twelve was so badly reviewed I didn’t bother to see it. The sprawling cast features great vignettes from everyone, though Pacino and Ellen Barkin are underutilized, and somewhat flat. But the duo of Clooney and Pitt oozes the kind of cool that characterized Sinatra’s original.

#40 in my movie challenge for the year was Dreamgirls. Imbalanced. Pretty to look at and sporadically fun to watch. The two actors whose characters are most compelling are Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy. When the focus is on Beyonce and Jamie Foxx, the 2-hour-plus movie drags. Some of the musical numbers are good, especially the early Motown-inspired ones. Hudson’s wows in “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and Beyonce finally shows some spark in “Listen”, but other songs were so dull I got up to do laundry, and didn’t bother to pause the DVD. Beyonce dressed and made up as Diana Ross was worth seeing, but would’ve worked just as well as a magazine spread. The image didn’t translate to character, and did nothing to engage me in the story, and little to move it forward.

#39 in my 2007 movie challenge, Music and Lyrics, was an antidote to the bitterness of #38. M&L is predictable and rather thin, but Grant does a credible job playing a has-been pop star (a thinly veiled analog to Andrew Ridgeley of Wham!) while Barrymore does her usual ditzy/charming schtick. By the end, though, the sweetness between the two of them, and the humorous spectacle of the Britney-esque pop star for whom they’re writing a song, won me over. Further, the catchy, retro-80’s pop music was crafted by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger, whose obvious affection for the music is easy to appreciate. The music video, and the pop-up version at the end, are hilarious sendups.

#38 in my 2007 movie challenge was Notes on a Scandal. It’s a short, but powerful story about a friendship between Blanchett’s free-spirited art teacher Sheba Hart and Dench’s battle axe history teacher. The nastiness of the film is dense and compressed, like a bitter diamond. The film does a deft balancing act of making both characters believable, understandable, and yet not quite likeable. Dench’s character is ugly inside and out, but her solitary meditations on a life of loneliness are heart wrenching. Sheba is short for Bathsheba, a reference to the Biblical story, in which a beautiful woman is seduced (or possibly commanded) away from her older husband, Uriah the Hittite by a handsome young man, King David.

#37 in my 2007 movie challenge was Adrienne Shelley’s Waitress. I feel cynical when I wonder if the reviews of this film are so effusive because Shelley was murdered before the film was released. It is a very good film, though. I was strongly reminded of the tone of Hal Hartley’s early films such as The Unbelievable Truth, which starred Shelley and that I saw at the Ritz in Philadelphia. It’s by turns bitter and sweet, like the chocolate called for in many of the movie’s pies. Keri Russell and her heart-shaped face are captivating as Jenna, a pie-inventing woman married to a controlling and abusive husband. Jeremy Sisto gives a chilling performance, all the more creepy because of his obvious love for Jenna.

#36 in my 2007 movie challenge was Diggers, starring Paul Rudd. Is there anything he can’t do–television, movies, poker, music, dancing, comedy, and drama?

In Diggers he’s a 70’s clam digger who can’t quite work up the nerve to leave his small job and small town.

Diggers may seem like a tired premise: four working class buddies try with varying success to manage family, work and times that are a-changin’. Yet the acting, the humor of Ken Marino’s script (he played Vinnie Van Lowe on Veronica Mars), and director Katherine Dieckmann’s obvious affection both for the characters and story all elevate this little indie.

Rudd, Marino, and Maura Tierney gave strong performances that resulted in complex, sympathetic characters. Lauren Ambrose and Ron Eldard looked good, but their acting showed–they didn’t inhabit their characters as completely as the rest of the cast. I watched the deleted scenes both with and without commentary. Unlike other DVDs, where the deleted scenes make clear the reason they were cut, these flesh out the characters, and show the process of editing. Some were removed when the storyline changed, and characters were dropped, and sequences of events changed. Yes, a few were superfluous, but overall watching them improved my appreciation for the sweet film a great deal.